


Only people and their decisions

by Guzmanasol



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Author did minimal research, Curses, Folklore, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 02:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15133211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guzmanasol/pseuds/Guzmanasol
Summary: It's Jimmy who brings home the baby that summer.





	Only people and their decisions

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [ofjustimagine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofjustimagine/pseuds/ofjustimagine) in the [PuckingRare2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PuckingRare2018) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> accidental baby acquisition
> 
> for S, who gave me a crash course primer on rangers so I would write this

It’s Jimmy who brings home the baby that summer. 

 

He had to kick the front door twice to be let in, arms full of a squirming baby that he was only a few seconds away from dropping. Brady is the one who opened the door and he thinks there’s some sort of symbolism in how  _ precarious _ the situation he saw was-- and still is, really. But he coasted through English, and even if he hadn’t, he doubts that looking for symbolism in his own life is going to end well-- especially when there’s a curse baby involved. 

 

Because there’s no other explanation for how Jimmy goes out to get more coffee beans and comes back with a baby that he couldn’t remember getting and couldn’t walk away from. It’s a hard curse to cast, and an even harder one to maintain, so curse babies aren’t common. Not like rashes or warts or a run of mild inconveniences. Even Brady, a four on the Ramos-Casillas scale, can do those. Jimmy is only a bit better, a five, but he’s never really bothered. Brady texts Kevin, again, wondering how long it takes to drop someone off at the airport because he left like forever ago to take his parents to JFK and he still isn’t back. He waits a few seconds before calling and getting his voicemail. He hangs up and calls back, repeats the process a few more times while Jimmy works his way down the team provided list of talented and discrete Breakers.

 

“I keep getting Katrina’s out of office message, and none of the emergency Breakers on the official list are qualified to deal with something like this,” Jimmy tells Brady, voice tight even as he smiles at the baby. They’d spread a blanket out on the floor of their living room and pulled out an old paper towel tube that probably won’t kill the baby while they figure out what the hell to do. 

 

“Kev isn’t answering either,” Brady tells him. He feels a little queasy. The baby is still there, and they don’t know what the curse parameters or activation is and this could go so, so wrong. And the baby just giggles and bats around the tube. She looks so harmless. Brady desperately wishes she was. 

 

“Any idea who you pissed off enough for them cast a curse baby on you?” 

 

“Fuck off, we don’t know that I’m the one who pissed anybody off. And they could’ve hired someone else to do this,” Jimmy protests. 

 

“Dude, you’re the one who came back with her, that totally means you’re the primary target. And also, curse babies are fucking expensive,” Brady snaps back, nerves eating away at his temper, “I’m not even sure we could afford to hire someone to cast a curse baby.” 

 

“What the fuck?” It’s Kev, finally back from the airport and of course he shows up when Brady and Jimmy are almost at each other’s throats. He’s quiet for a second as he takes in everything, eyes skipping over Jimmy and Brady and landing on the baby. Brady can practically see him run through the list of people they know who have babies, are in town for the summer, and would be willing to hand their kid off to Jimmy and Brady. It’s a short list, because there are precisely zero people on it. Brady had done the math himself when Jimmy and the baby had first shown up. “Oh fuck that’s a fucking curse baby isn’t it.” 

 

It’s not actually a question. Jimmy nods in answer anyway and Brady is startled to see how pale he is, lips pressed tight and eyes a little wild looking. He probably doesn’t look much better. But there’s a curse baby in their apartment, looking cute and adorable and more and more like she could be related to one of his boyfriends. Now is pretty much a totally acceptable time to look freaked out. 

 

“Is there a breaker on the way?” Kevin asks, still staring at the baby. 

 

“No. Katrina is out of office and everyone else on the official list is like a fifteen or below.” Jimmy sighs as he waves the laminated list at Kevin. The baby babbles and grabs at the air. Brady watches Kevin go soft around the edges as he’s charmed by her. His stomach sinks. If it was any other baby this would be fine, would be awesome, but it’s a curse baby and if Kevin and Jimmy are already halfway in love with her they’re  _ screwed _ .

 

Because the thing about curse babies, the way they hurt you is by making you fall in love, build a family that includes the baby-- and then they disappear. If you’re lucky, you can find a Breaker strong enough to divine the curse foundations. Then you get to spend the rest of your life avoiding anything that could erode the magic holding the baby together and in actual baby form. Those are the nicer curse babies, the ones that show up in Disney movies. 

 

Brady grew up on stories of curse babies that were taken to the ocean and turned into rattlesnakes in the target parent’s arms the moment their toes touched salt water. Kevin doesn’t often talk about his father’s cousin, the one who taught his dad to skate, and what he was like before his curse baby starved to death in his arms the first time he was taken to play out in the snow. Brady knows that he lives in Miami now, never travels north-- not even in summer, and he might not have gone to Harvard but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. 

 

“Oh thank fuck I finally got through to you,” Jimmy practically shouts into his phone. Brady damn near jumps out of his skin, and fucking fantastic the baby is crying now and Kevin is picking her up, trying to soothe her. “Katrina, yes I know that I should not be swearing at you when I want help--- I am not--- ok, I understand why--- there’s a fucking  _ curse baby _ here, that’s why you hear crying!”

 

Kevin has the baby mostly settled now and it’s doing crazy things to Brady’s internal organs, watching him and seeing how good he is at this-- he swears he can hear a clock ticking, a countdown to falling in love with this baby just like his boyfriends have already. It’s terrifying and enticing and Brady wishes desperately he could think of one single instance where a curse baby hasn’t ended in utter heartbreak. He can’t. 

 

“Right yeah, lemme just grab a pen or something. Thank you, seriously thank you so much. Ok, I’m ready,” Jimmy babbles as bit as he heads into the kitchen to grab a pen. Brady tries to remember if they’d covered curse babies in the PR boot camp he’d been put through as a rookie. Does he need to call the team’s legal department to get an NDA? Are curse babies considered a long term injury or would they fall under like the general “family emergency” category for being out a while-- would Jimmy even be out? Or could he play, and they all just never mention that the whole curse baby thing? Brady doesn’t fucking know. 

 

“Hey sweetheart, are you old enough for baby food? I’m not seeing any teeth for solid foods, but maybe if you give me a smile I can check, huh? You wanna help me out there?” Kevin is fucking cooing at the baby in his arms. 

 

“Kev, would you chill out? For all we know, food could be the destabilizer,” Brady snaps. He doesn’t want to be the asshole, but like someone clearly needs to remember that curse babies aren’t like normal babies and they shouldn’t do anything until the person Katrina was recommending came over. Either they’d identify the most likely destabilizers or they might be able to completely unknot the magics holding the baby together and there’d be no more curse and hopefully no crushing depression, just physical agony for a few weeks while the curse got its pound of flesh.

 

“Brady. Babe. Relax. We’re going to get this sorted out.”

 

Brady stares at Kevin. Blinks a few times. Settles for just sighing. Of course Kev is an optimist-- Brady has known that for as long as he’s known Kev. In Kev’s world, of course there’s some way to sort this out so that they can raise the adorable curse baby and not get hurt. Brady would love to live in Kev’s world. 

 

“So Katrina called in Sorinna, who apparently is like a fucking twenty two, and Sorinna will be here in about twenty minutes. Katrina also wants me to see someone at Tarrytown to make sure that I didn’t get cursed with anything else. She doesn’t think you two need to get checked, but if anything changes or gets weird, go see them.” Jimmy sighs as he comes back into the living room and fills them in, dropping onto the couch next to Kevin and the baby. Brady’s internal organs do the stupid thing again, because that looks like Brady’s dream family right there. 

 

“Right, cool, got it.” He’s babbling. Wonderful. It’s fine. He’s fine. Brady is an adult and he is not going to panic over having someone who registers as a goddamn twenty-two on the Ramos-Casillas scale in his apartment. It’s not a big deal. She’s in the top 3% of Users worldwide, and he’s fucking lucky that they stayed in the city longer, because trying to find someone that powerful in almost any other city in the country is a hell of a lot harder. 

 

Sorinna, when she eventually gets there, comes with a tote bag stuffed full of every magical diagnostic tool Brady has ever seen and several he’s never even heard of before, and a flower crown that seems almost perky. She takes them all in, eyes lingering on Jimmy and the curse baby, and nods once. 

 

“Walk me through everything you did this morning Jimmy. While he’s doing that, I want you two to write down any family history of curses, any hexes more serious than a Red Shoes, and any disagreements involving multiple people. Don’t skip anything, no matter how petty or irrelevant it seems.”

 

* * *

 

Sorina is there for six hours when all is said and done. Kevin has a headache from detailing his family history because apparently his family gets hexed the way Brady’s breaks bones. Fucking hell, Brady could’ve lived his entire life without hearing some of that shit. And he definitely owes Kev’s dad a nice thing of whiskey for making him sit through Black Mass a few years ago. Jimmy apparently woke up feeling like he  _ absolutely had to leave _ the apartment, and Brady’s lack of coffee seemed like a decent reason. Brady doesn’t have that sort of family history and he didn’t have the compulsion to  _ go _ somewhere. But he was right about the countdown to falling in love with the baby. Because he’s the one holding her and cooing to her when she fusses in her sleep and he looks at her and tries to think of names. He’s fucked, basically. 

 

Because even after calling her agency head, Sorinna doesn’t have any leads for unknotting the magic. She does know what the destabilizer is, and Jimmy’s face sinks as he and Brady make eye contact. Kevin refuses to look up from the list of notes in front of him. 

 

“We have a few options to try and lengthen the distance that there can be between all of you, but even that will only take you up to five miles at the most. And that’s assuming everything works perfectly and the Caster didn’t work in some nasty surprises,” Sorinna tells them. She looks exhausted, the flowers in her hair wilted and her mascara smudged from all the times she’d rubbed her eyes after staring at the baby’s aura. Brady doubts he looks much better. 

 

“Thank you Sorinna. Do you have like a business card or something? I think we need a little bit of time before we try anything.” Jimmy stands up, shakes Sorinna’s hand and takes her card, and walks her out. He’s always the polite one, even when everything is going sideways. Kevin isn’t looking at Brady or the baby. Brady wonders how the pounding of his heart doesn’t wake the baby up. Because it’s terrifying. 

If he, Jimmy, and Kevin get more than a mile from each other or the baby, this baby turns back into a fucking  _ inland taipan _ . Two hours ago Brady didn’t even know what an inland taipan was. 

 

The destabilizer hadn’t even sounded that bad, initially. And then Kevin made a strangled sounding noise and woke up the baby, and Jimmy made a choked noise back because they realized first. Brady doesn’t get the big deal-- they’re team and they live together, they already spend what feels like every minute together, they’ve got this. But then he volunteers to run to the store for baby supplies by himself, to pull himself together and everyone stared at him, and  _ waited _ . 

 

Google tells him that buybuy baby is 1.2 miles from their apartment. There are other stores closer but that’s not the point. If they want to keep this kid alive, they all need to go. Brady is starting to get why his boyfriends sounded in so much pain when Sorinna told them.  He’d dropped back into his spot on the couch and let Kevin ask Sorinna more questions about curse babies. 

 

This was going to make their season a fucking mess, and if anyone got  _ injured _ \- nope, Brady decides, he’s thought enough about terrifying things today. Even if they managed to survive hauling this kid all over North America for the season and nobody got injured, that still left the offseason. Family visits, catching up with friends, being best men in all of the fucking weddings-- all of that just got infinitely more complicated. Brady is starting to see the curse part of the whole curse baby. 

 

They can keep this kid alive, raise her up-- and start to resent each other from the constant forced proximity. Brady thinks he’s having nightmares about one of them wanting to go home while the others want to go to World’s. Or if only one of them gets named to Team USA for the Olympics. He’s honest enough to admit he’d be pissed as hell if he got named and had to turn it down. Not to mention, they either have to tell everyone that this kid is a curse baby and what the destabilizer is or they have to risk pissing off a good number of people in their personal and professional lives. Brady groans when he remembers that they still have contracts to negotiate and  _ fuck fuck fuck _ , this is a mess.

 

“Or a curse,” he mutters to himself. Kevin and Jimmy don’t notice, too caught up in contemplating all the ways this could blow up in their faces. He gets that, was totally the one thinking that shit while they tried to figure out if they could keep this baby. Brady isn’t one for excess negativity and worrying, so clearly he’s got to get them focused on like, the happy practical shit. “So anyone got a name in mind for this kid?”

 

“Brady what the fuck,” Kevin says flatly. He’s looking up from his notes, though, so Brady is going to take that as a win. 

 

“We have a kid. There’s paperwork that comes with her, and that requires a name. I say we do Hayes Vesey with a hyphen as the last name, give her Skjei as a middle name. Spare her all the butchered pronunciations.”

 

“You are aware of the odds of us keeping her not a snake long enough for her to need that paperwork is like, less than half a percent, right?” Jimmy sounds like he’s been crying and Brady is a shit boyfriend for not noticing. But no time like the present to change and all that. 

“Sounds about the same as the odds of us making the league and look where we are now,” Brady tells him, waves his arm around their apartment. They’ve got a couple of special jerseys and pucks decorating the place. There’s the extra gear from their sponsorship deals in the front closet, notes from their nutritionists on the fridge, and player’s lot parking passes in their cars. The three of them are pretty good at doing the exceptionally difficult.

 

“Thought you didn’t want this baby,” Kevin says. And ok yes Brady was not exactly first aboard the baby hype train but the situation has changed. 

 

“Didn’t want to get attached to a baby we couldn’t keep. We get to keep her, though, and it’s going to be hard and suck majorly in a couple of ways-- but we can work through that. We’re here, we’re together, and we can find a way to make this work and raise this fucking kid.” 

 

Brady’s shouting by the end, left arm waving wildly, and he wakes the baby up. Her tiny fists smack into his chest and Brady swears he can see both Kevin and Jimmy melt. He’s won, he knows it. Because they’d been talking kids and maybes and the future for a while now, and they kept saying  _ soon _ ,  _ soon _ . Soon is  _ now _ , and the only way out is through. 

 

“I’m sorry sweetheart, don’t be mad at me for Papa being silly, that’s not on me,” he croons to her frantically, trying to settle her back down. 

 

“Why am I Papa? I could be Dad, let me be Dad!” 

 

“Can you two do this in the car? We need to actually get food and clothes-- and shit, we can’t just take the baby in a car without a carseat,” Jimmy sounds fed up and Brady has never loved him more. Because even in the midst of hands down the craziest fucking day, he’s still looking after them and now their kid. Holy shit they have a kid. That is going to trip him up for a while, but in like a good way. 

 

“I mean probably? We just gotta hold her. Drive slow and it’ll be fine,” Kevin tells them as he grabs his wallet and shoes from the spot in the living room that always seems to wind up with all of their shit. “Brady, dude c’mon you gotta wear shoes or they won’t let you in.”

 

Brady makes Jimmy hold the baby while he grabs his stuff. How the hell do parents get anywhere on time? Even with three of them and no baby shit to pack up, it still takes forever to get to the car and actually get to the store. But walking out into the humid New York City air, Brady feels better than he has all day, since Jimmy brought the baby home. He’s got his boys and they’ve got him, and they’ll take it one day at a time. Curses are what you make of them and Brady intends to make the best of this curse. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- I have mashed together a ton of different mythologies and folklores to suit my own purposes  
> \- No actual magic practices are referenced in this fic  
> \- Jimmy is the one cursed because of the whole UFA #VeseyWatch thing.  
> \- The kid does indeed live a long good life  
> \- The boys go through much counseling and do work their way up to five miles
> 
> “There are no such things as curses; only people and their decisions”-- Yvonne Woon.


End file.
